Assassins’ Guild Code of Conduct

The Assassins’ Guild Code of Conduct binds the use of force to procedure and makes the Guild’s neutrality part of its authority. Its rules require a formal Filing of Intent before an assassination may proceed, provide avenues to delay or avert violence, and restrict who may use force against fellow citizens. The Guild’s later crisis shows how those principles can be tested not only by an openly lawless faction, but also by a Council that fails to enforce its own standards.

Filing and Review

A legal assassination begins with a Filing of Intent: a Document of Intent is entered in the official state registry, recording the issue between the parties. The record is sealed, ribboned, and kept in the archive; any answer to the filing is entered there as well. The procedure makes a dispute visible to the institution and preserves a record of the claims rather than permitting lethal action to begin without formal notice.

The Guild Council must publicly advise that action is impending and give itself an opportunity to take depositions from both sides. It first decides whether there is adequate cause for a filing, then considers the merits and whether a remedy short of lethal action is possible. At its discretion, the Council may hear from Guild members employed by either side about the prospects for settlement, and it may impose another delay while pressing the parties to resolve the dispute. Only if those measures fail does a Council vote approve the filing and set a date after which action can begin.

That timetable also gives the targeted party’s bodyguard time to prepare. The bodyguards on both sides remain in contact with the central Guild, which is not to give either side an informational advantage. If either unit seeks to suspend action, the Guild can mediate toward a mutually acceptable settlement. A unit may also request a truce to advise its lord that the defense has failed and that yielding the disputed matter may be the only way to survive.

Limits on Force

Not every filing receives the same level of deliberation. In relatively small disputes, especially those involving property or divorce, an office of the Council may approve a filing after taking witness depositions, without debate by the full Council. Such an approval usually carries a ninety-nine-day limit: after that period, attempts to carry out the assassination must stop and the filing is set aside. The delay and deadline make time itself part of the code’s restraint, keeping a civil claim from becoming an indefinitely open license to kill.

A Filing of Intent is required before action against a person or institution, except when someone is defending against an illicit attack. In that case, whatever force the defender can muster at the scene is lawful. The code defines an attack as movement within arm’s length of the defender, or the first use of a distance weapon or a weapon of stealth, such as poison. Separately, violence against a fellow citizen is forbidden to anyone other than a Guild Assassin, except in defense of oneself, an employer, a household, clan property, or national treasure. A violator may be outlawed and exposed to Guild action without a time limit; an outlaw may surrender to the judgment of the Aiji in consultation with the Guild.

The procedures do not make lethal force ordinary in practice. The text presents it as a possibility in civil disputes but says it occurs far less often than that possibility suggests. Notice, depositions, an official finding that a wrong exists, and repeated chances to negotiate are designed to cool disputes before force is used. The code’s function is therefore not simply to authorize assassination, but to place it behind a sequence of review and restraint.

Neutrality Under Strain

The Guild’s neutrality in disputes is described as its cornerstone. That principle is thrown into relief by the Shadow Guild, whose members violated the established rules and procedures during the coup. The legitimate Guild, by contrast, continued to follow its rulebook, seeking to preserve the lives of the lords who formed the backbone of the aishidi’tat. Its restraint was not evidence that the crisis was harmless: at first, the legitimate Guild mistakenly accepted orders from conspirators because it did not understand that the people it trusted were hunting Tabini and Damiri.

The later account of the exiled Guild members makes the failure of neutrality more specific. They objected to unFiled attacks on civilians, violations of code, and the Council’s refusal to bring charges in several cases, including the case involving Haikuti. They had reconstructed how decisions about appointments to particular offices helped set up Murini’s rule, and knew Haikuti had been involved in the attack on Tabini at Taiben. They also knew his location had been known while he remained untouched. Information shared between the exiles and Jago’s group confirmed the seriousness of those concerns, although Banichi and Algini had no absolute proof from their sources when they went to the Kadagidi estate.

That uncertainty shaped Banichi’s conduct. He anticipated trouble but did not tell Bren, caught between the chance to build a clear case against the Kadagidi and the need to protect the exiles as an information source. His earlier conflict with Haikuti also complicated his position. Once the evidence was checked, Jago told Bren that she had no remaining doubt about Haikuti’s involvement. The episode links the code’s demand for lawful proof to the practical difficulty of obtaining it without exposing sources or allowing a suspect to escape accountability.

Restoration and Institutional Independence

The exiled Guild members had not favored Tabini because of his association with humans, and they feared Lord Geigi and opposed the space program. They also recognized that their earlier support for Shishogi’s demands, including rejection of computers as a human gift, had been a serious mistake. Their decision to return was grounded instead in loyalty to the law: they had worked with humans on Mospheira during Murini’s rule and now gave their word to help reclaim the Guild, investigate its records, and restore lawful practice. To do so, they were leaving their assumed identities again, along with families and marriages.

The danger was both physical and institutional. Jago warned that a confrontation with innocent Guild members could end with the wrong side winning or with the loss of proof. If Shishogi expected dismissal, he might destroy records; without proof, the Guild could not demonstrate its case to its own membership. Even if Tabini upheld the reformers by decree and the power of the aijinate, the Guild would not regain its former standing. Its opponents therefore needed to show before the Council that the Council itself had broken the law. Under the charter, only Tabini and the aiji-dowager could demand the Council’s attention regardless of its agenda, but the latter’s Eastern identity risked resistance from the exiles.

The Guild’s autonomy is also part of the larger settlement that established the expanded aishidi’tat. Guild membership and assignments were to cross clan and regional lines: members would be appointed according to qualification, with authority over membership held by the guild masters. In a separate agreement, the Assassins’ Guild accepted a ban on its members seeking or holding political office or lordship. In return, it received statutory protections against political pressure: lords could not summon its records, its members testified only before their own Guild Council, and the Guild alone could investigate and handle the disappearance or death of one of its members under its own rules.

These arrangements place the code at the boundary between law and power. Guild independence protects the institution from political interference, but the coup demonstrates that autonomy cannot by itself guarantee neutral enforcement: the Council’s decisions and the records it controls can still be compromised. The exiles’ insistence on evidence and a hearing before the Council follows the same principle as the filing procedure. For the Guild to restore its authority, it must not merely defeat those who broke the rules; it must establish, through its own lawful processes, that the rules still bind the institution that enforces them.